Mutant Drabbles
by Jordanna Morgan
Summary: A collection of drabbles and snippets, mostly challenge-inspired.
1. The First Time

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Title: The First Time  
**Author:** Jordanna Morgan  
**Archive Rights:** Please request the author's consent.  
**Rating/Warnings:** G.  
**Characters:** Kurt and Logan.  
**Setting:** General.  
**Summary:** Kurt has his doubts about what Logan is getting him into…  
**Disclaimer:** Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. Not me.  
**Notes:** A friend of mine once took part in a challenge to write all-dialogue pieces that involved one or more blue mutants. Inspired by the drabbles she wrote, I created this hundred-word snippet.

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The First Time

"I'm not sure of this, Logan."

"That was my first reaction. Trust me, you'll get used to it."

"But it's so uncomfortable."

"Yeah, well… _OW_! Hey, watch that tail, bub!"

"Sorry."

"Can you breathe okay?"

"Yes. I think so. _Ouch_."

"It wouldn't hurt if you'd hold still already."

"At the moment, I couldn't move unless I teleported."

"Come on, it's not that bad. You just need some practice."

"A _lot_ of practice."

"Hey. If I can do it, you can too."

"But is this really necessary?"

"'Fraid so, Kurt. If you wanna be an X-Man—you've gotta wear the uniform."

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© 2003 Jordanna Morgan - _send feedback_


	2. Complicated

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Title: Complicated  
**Author:** Jordanna Morgan  
**Archive Rights:** Please request the author's consent.  
**Rating/Warnings:** G.  
**Characters:** Mainly Logan.  
**Setting:** Mid-_X2_, at the Drake household.  
**Summary:** Some people can't begin to imagine the true meaning of the word.  
**Disclaimer:** Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. Not me.  
**Notes:** Written in 14.5 minutes for the 15MinuteFiclets community. The challenge word was "complicated", which immediately brought to mind the words of Bobby Drake's mother in _X2_. This is the response Logan really wanted to give.

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Complicated

"It's just… this mutant problem is a little—"

"What mutant _problem_?"

"…_complicated_."

Logan shook his head and leaned against the frame of the doorway, turning his gaze from Madeline Drake. For a moment, the room sank back into an awkward, nervous silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock and the purring of the cat.

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Complicated, indeed.

Complicated was not simply being born with an ability that other people didn't happen to have.

Complicated was standing between a heavily armed military assault and the kids whose lives had just been entrusted to you. Complicated was a black fear wrought by the savage ghosts of an unremembered past. Complicated was knowing the pieces that would make it all make sense were somewhere inside your head, yet being completely unable to grasp them.

Complicated was not knowing who you really were—and not being sure you even wanted to know.

Complicated was the certainty that you would soon find out…

Or die trying.

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© 2005 Jordanna Morgan - _send feedback_


	3. Simple

**Title:** Simple  
**Author:** Jordanna Morgan  
**Archive Rights:** Please request the author's consent.  
**Rating/Warnings:** G.  
**Characters:** Logan.  
**Setting:** General.  
**Summary:** Logan doesn't know his age, but somewhere in the back of his mind, there's a vague awareness that he's old.  
**Disclaimer:** Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. Not me.  
**Notes:** A 250-word drabble that came to me out of nowhere. Just a few random musings on Logan's feelings about progress.

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Logan doesn't know his age, but somewhere in the back of his mind, there's a vague awareness that he's old.

He can tell it by the way he understands old things. As far as he's concerned, computers might as well have come from another planet—but give him a cumbersome old piece of equipment that became obsolete decades ago, and he knows how it works. He can take apart a World War II-surplus radio and put it back together again. The machines from those days make sense to him, because they're simple.

He can tell it by his discomfort with the pace of the world. Something within him silently longs for a time when people made agreements with handshakes instead of lawyers, when families talked over the dinner table instead of their cellphones, when kids got together to play baseball instead of video games. When a person didn't have to do a hundred things to accomplish one thing. When life was better, because it was simple.

The only answer to why he feels for a time like that is because he was born of it. Maybe he has no memory of it, but that doesn't mean he can't miss it. Maybe his body won't grow old, but that doesn't mean his mind adapts to change any more easily than other old people's do.

Sometimes he thinks it isn't really _what_ he is that makes him so different; it's _when_ he is.

Because Logan is simple… and the world is not.

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_© 2006 Jordanna Morgan - send feedback_


	4. With You Here

**Title:** With You Here  
**Author:** Jordanna Morgan  
**Archive Rights:** Please request the author's consent.  
**Rating/Warnings:** G.  
**Characters:** Colossus/ShadowCat.  
**Setting:** Mid-X2.  
**Summary:** Colossus contemplates after the invasion of the school.  
**Disclaimer:** Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. I'm simply playing with them.  
**Notes:** A 400-word drabble about a pairing I like, but have had little past opportunity to write. It was written for Madripoor Rose as a Fandom Stocking gift. It stands alone, but it also fits in with _Beast_, a much larger story I have just completed.

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It was not until after the escape that fear caught up with Peter Rasputin; not until after the adrenaline of fight and flight, and the completion of the duty he was charged with. In the direct presence of danger, all that was required of him was action—and that was easier than the thinking and feeling that came afterward.

The _afterward_ came when he had safely guided all but nine of his fellow students to the safe house two miles from the school.

Within an hour, Doctor McCoy had arrived to look after them, and Peter thought it should have been a relief to relinquish the role of guardian… but he found himself unable to rest easy in idleness. His mind ceaselessly retraced everything that had happened, and everything he had done. He wondered who the attackers were, and what they wanted, and whether they would come again. He wondered what would happen now. He wondered if the nine missing students were alright—and worst of all, he wondered if he could have done anything to rescue them.

Sitting curled up in a corner of the safe house's small, comfortable living room, he watched as Kitty Pryde moved among the younger children, giving them hugs and softly murmured words of reassurance.

She was younger than him, but at that moment, she looked far more grown up than he felt.

When her rounds of gentle comforting brought her close to him, she paused to meet his eyes, giving him a thin smile. "You okay?"

Peter didn't feel like it, but he returned the smile, nodding slightly. "Yeah."

"That's good." Kitty's smile wavered, her lips trembling slightly, and her voice dropped to a near-whisper. "Because I'm not."

The quiver of fear in her voice, and the lost look in her eyes, were something Peter could respond to; something he could focus on instead of himself. He leaned forward, lightly capturing Kitty's hand in his.

"Hey… it'll be alright." _With you here_, he added silently.

Kitty smiled wanly, but gratefully—and he was startled to hear her repeat his own thought. "With you here… maybe it will."

A faint, surprised smile flitted briefly across Peter's face. Kitty gave a slight shrug, and her hand squeezed his before it slipped out of his grasp. He watched her thoughtfully as she turned to continue looking after the children.

_Maybe it will be alright, after all_.

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_© 2009 Jordanna Morgan - send feedback_


	5. Power Trip

**Title:** Power Trip  
**Author:** Jordanna Morgan  
**Archive Rights:** Please request the author's consent.  
**Rating/Warnings:** PG if you read it right…  
**Characters:** Beast, viewed from the perspective of my original character Nora Tanner.  
**Setting:** Sometime after my story titled _Beast_.  
**Summary:** Being Hank McCoy's lover was all about power.  
**Disclaimer:** Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. I'm simply playing with them.  
**Notes:** A four-hundred-word drabble. It's a bit of a racy departure by my standards, exploring the attraction Hank holds for Nora—my OC from _Beast_. I highly recommend reading that much larger story before this one.

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Being Hank McCoy's lover was all about power.

Even as a mutant, his professional achievements and personal charm still made him a man of great influence. Several phone numbers for Capitol Hill were on his speed dial. Famous authors and artists had sought his discerning critique before unveiling their work to the world. The front row was his accustomed place at every theater on Broadway, and he commanded the best table at restaurants so exclusive, mere mortals didn't even know they existed.

Of course, for the lady who walked into those theaters and restaurants on his arm, sharing his VIP treatment was a nice perk—but that wasn't what made Nora Tanner fall in love with him again every night.

She loved everything about him, and she always had: his intelligence, his humor, his compassion, his dedication. But there was something else about him that attracted her, on a far more basic level.

It was _physical_ power she had a jones for.

It was the power of Hank's arms when he held her close; the power of his lungs as he breathed quick and hard, breathing in the scent of her. It was the power of his heart, thudding eagerly against the strong solid ribs beneath his fur. In those intimate moments when his self-conscious restraint slipped away, the raw primal energy of him _was_ power at its most intoxicating.

That power was always a part of Hank, even before he had the fur and fangs to give outward evidence of it. Nora had sensed it from their first kiss, filling her with a keen thrill of realization that she had found something special—some_one_ special. Someone passionately alive beyond all natural standards of intensity. A force of nature in a designer suit.

Aware of those depths within himself even then, he had hesitated to fully share them with her; but now that his physiological changes had progressed even further, his instinctive responses were sometimes too strong to resist.

And Nora was just fine with that—because it wasn't only about power exerted. It was also about power subdued.

Hank's massive clawed hands could easily shatter bones, but they touched her and held her with complete tenderness. His sharp teeth were designed for shearing through flesh, but when he kissed her, there was only soft sweetness on his lips.

In Nora's arms, the Beast was tamed… and _that_ was power.

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_© 2009 Jordanna Morgan - send feedback_


	6. Safe Corridors

**Title:** Safe Corridors  
**Author:** Jordanna Morgan  
**Archive Rights:** Please request the author's consent.  
**Rating/Warnings:** G.  
**Characters:** Primarily Kitty Pryde and Hank McCoy.  
**Setting:** Kitty's early days at Xavier's.  
**Summary:** How Kitty Pryde learned her way around the school.  
**Disclaimer:** Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. I'm simply playing with them.  
**Notes:** Just a tiny little 400-word Mutant High problem-solving sketch. It was written as a Fandom Stocking gift for Wiliqueen on LiveJournal.

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From the first time Kitty Pryde arrived at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, she was awed by the sheer size and complexity of the mansion. It was a vast, sprawling maze, a seemingly endless enigma of rooms and hallways and corridors--and _so many walls_.

Which quickly began to present a problem for Kitty... or rather, for the people around her.

You see, Kitty could walk through walls. It was her thing. Even by the time she arrived at Mutant High, it was such a second nature to her that she would ghost quickly from one room to the next without a thought. It was as easy as breathing, and at times it made her life an awful lot more convenient.

There was just one problem: any time she popped through a wall that happened to contain electrical wiring, a nasty power glitch was the result.

"_Kitty_!" squawked Jubilee, in a fair imitation of Siryn, leaning out through the bathroom doorway with dripping hair. "You zoned out the hair dryer again!"

"Aww, Kitty, we were on level thirty-seven!" Peter howled, dropping his Nintendo controller in disgust.

And when Kitty arrived late for a class in the computer lab, Doctor McCoy merely sighed and looked up at the sheepish girl, with an expression of mingled dismay and sympathy that had nothing to do with her tardiness.

"Ah, Kitty," he said with weary kindness, shaking his head over the reboot screen of his computer. "I can see this problem is going to need some serious consideration."

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Two days after the computer lab incident, Doctor McCoy took Kitty aside just after breakfast. "I want to show you something."

With puzzlement and faint trepidity, Kitty obediently followed the scientist to the far side of the room, where he pointed out two small stripes of orange masking tape on the wall.

"I was up half the night with Jones, mapping out the electrical wiring in the mansion." Doctor McCoy tapped the four-foot span of wall between the two pieces of tape. "You see this, Kitty? This space denotes a portion of the wall that's free of wiring. It's a _safe corridor_. I've marked them out all over the school--just temporarily, of course. We'll remove the tape when you know them by heart."

Kitty's eyes grew wide, and with a squeak of delight, she sprang onto her tiptoes to throw her arms around his neck.

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_ 2010 Jordanna Morgan - send feedback_


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